Justice Served
by Nachtsider
Summary: In which Henrietta avenges her family.
1. Chapter 1

Author's notes: This tale, penned by me, Nachtsider, is based on the excellent anime/_manga_ known as 'Gunslinger Girl', which is the brainchild of Yu Aida. In this story, the Social Welfare Agency puts closure on several of Italy's most notorious murder mysteries – including one closer to home than anyone could have thought. **Bearing in mind that all original concepts, characters, their distinctive likenesses and related elements featured in this publication are my property and may not be used without my express permission**, enjoy the composition, and feel free to drop this author a line at the relevant electronic mail address (nachtsider at yahoo dot com)!

**JUSTICE SERVED**

**CHAPTER ONE: CHAOS**

It was half-past two in the morning when a rapping at Henrietta's bedroom door awoke her from a fitful slumber. She was grateful for the interruption, for she had been visited by a strange and fantastic dream in which she seemed to be stalking a young couple down a darkened, dreary street, dagger in hand. From such unwelcome phantoms even the rudest awakening comes as a welcome relief. At the door she discovered Giuseppe, already clad in his work clothes.

"There's a squad car waiting downstairs, Henrietta," he said. "Enzo's sent for us – another double murder's just taken place."

Henrietta swiftly dressed, fetched her weapons and hurried down. But it soon seemed that she had shaken off her dreams only to enter a world equally spectral and oppressive. The car bucked and swayed through deserted streets. A chill wind had laid waste to the city. How many of the millions who toil daily in Rome have ever seen its other face? It is an eerie reflection of that brash and bustling metropolis – all being the same, and yet not the same. No doubt it sounds fanciful, but when seen through Henrietta's eyes from that madly dashing vehicle, the city bore the aspect of a skull. The very streets seemed terrible; a fit area for the most sordid crimes.

They had struck five times that law-enforcement knew of, had the psychopathic pair who dubbed themselves 'Nightfall' and 'Sundown'. At least five times and probably more over the past ten months they had prowled the Umbria region's lovers' lanes after dark in search of human prey, creeping up on young couples as they embraced in their automobiles or in the undergrowth. Giuseppe remembered how his eye had raced down the autopsy protocols to confirm the fiends had finished the poor souls off before they performed the gruesome remainder of their diabolical deeds.

They left each body where it lay when they were done with it. Neither rape nor sexual abuse was part of their agenda, but what they did have in mind was far more terrible. All the victims were discovered arranged in grotesque tableaux; the corpses strewn and garlanded with flowers, their genitals lewdly exposed. Worse still, it was in their habit to excise anatomical trophies – uteri in some cases, viscera and breasts in others. Though the ghastly mutilations were initially conducted with near-surgical precision, the ferocity with which the murderers committed these appeared to be increasing with every passing attack, and the intervals between assaults were growing distressingly short.

A further notable characteristic of Nightfall and Sundown's crimes was an alarming lack of useful evidence. The sole survivor to their atrocities – still hospitalized and in critical condition – was only able to describe her assailants as ghoulishly masked, hooded phantoms _ala_ Kathryn Beaumont of _Mask of the Phantasm_ infamy. Investigators were never able to develop any meaningful forensic data when probing the murder scenes. They were meticulous, leaving no fingerprints, no trace evidence of hair or fiber.

And then there were the letters, all plastered with excess postage and mailed on a semi-regular basis to the police and press – creatively macabre pop-up greeting cards, elaborately decorated with morbid illustrations and featuring text written in a loopy, childlike scrawl. Threats and taunts peppered these dispassionate, soulless messages (a 'box-score' feature that presented the killers' current body count alongside a figure of zero for the police was common), these invariably including details of the murders that only the perpetrators could have known. Enclosed occasionally were intricate, inscrutable cryptograms that supposedly contained hints to the killers' identities and locations. The latest missive came with a piece of skin flayed from a victim's thigh, along with ludicrous demands for appeasement – orders for plush toys in the murderers' garishly-costumed likenesses to be marketed nation-wide, no less – on pain of children being randomly shot after having their school bus disabled.

The result of this unfettered mayhem was a virtual panic in Umbria. In many counties, school buses were accompanied by patrol cars, or officers rode along with the kids on bus routes. The publication of Nightfall and Sundown's confessions and threats and the subsequent barrage of subjective, speculative press articles threw the populace into unprecedented fear. This media frenzy undermined the ongoing investigation, not to mention the fact that it obviously fed the murderous miscreants' compulsion for widespread attention.

To say that public pressure on the law-enforcement community to catch the killers was intense would be an understatement, and they worked on the case like men possessed. Now that the scare was at its height, some lovers' lanes had more plainclothesmen than sweethearts sitting in pairs in cars. There were not enough women officers to go around. In hot weather, male couples took turns wearing longhaired wigs and many mustaches and beards were sacrificed.

These sting operations invariably came to nothing, and it completely horrified everyone how everything always seemed to conspire to further Nightfall and Sundown's schemes. They were constantly at the right place at the right time, whilst their pursuers could do naught but trace the trail of gore and state, "The bastards have been here, and here." When the police finally decided that such extraordinary circumstances would require extraordinary measures to resolve, they contacted the Social Welfare Agency for assistance, thus setting into motion the chain of events that led to Giuseppe and Henrietta's involvement.

The young officer commandeering the vehicle had said only that the killings had occurred in the city's wealthy quarter. "The boss wouldn't let me near the bodies," he murmured with some uneasiness. "Said it was no fit sight for a rookie." They tore down roads and alleys, past the riverbank and into a district of lavish apartments and houses. Here at last the driver checked their furious progress, as they turned off down a narrow lane to the left. Some distance along they turned again, and drew up. "You're here," the cop said bluntly.

A cut opposite debouched into a small square where a group of persons were gathered under a lamp. As the pair approached, a familiar figure emerged from the shadows. It was Enzo, who greeted his old allies with grim cold courtesy.

"Horrible to think that increased police surveillance of the countryside has only spurred the bastards to make a gory debut here in the capital," he remarked. "I have no real idea how extensive your service has been, Giuseppe, but I shall be very surprised if you have seen anything like this before."

He led Giuseppe and Henrietta across the square to a dark corner. On the flagstones lay a shapeless mass. The veteran detective shone his flashlight on it, and bent to turn back the tarpaulin that covered the thing. It was a dead boy and girl – a local teenage couple, probably home late from some party or other. Their throats had been slashed in a most vicious manner, and their faces had been brutally disfigured. Pieces of gory tissue were heaped about their necks. Then Enzo pulled the sheet back all the way, exposing the lower bodies to view.

For a moment, Giuseppe was in danger of disgracing himself before a fellow professional. And yet the corpses presented nothing new to eyes that had witnessed countless violent deaths. It was not the injuries themselves that were so shocking – the gaping abdomens, the entrails torn asunder, the pools of drying blood – but rather the terrible cruelty with which they had been inflicted. Nothing that was said in subsequent press reports could begin to suggest the impression that was immediately burned upon the mind of everyone who saw the poor youngsters' corpses. The murder weapons – sharp, serrated blades – had been jabbed with tremendous force into their abdomens and then dragged upwards through the torsos until the sternums stopped them.

All those present with the _fratello_ team at that ungodly hour were with law-enforcement, and by profession inured to grisly scenes, and yet they all conspicuously avoided the ground where the bodies lay, and huddled together on the other side of the outlook as if for protection. Giuseppe knew that each man had felt as he had upon gazing on that obscene spectacle, that some dark power had risen out of the swamps of history, some atavistic freaks come to unleash horrors they had thought to meet only in old books and country tales, and with which they were hard pressed to deal. But he also knew better than to let such feelings become the masters of him – the perpetrators of this senseless violence were of flesh and blood, and the responsibility of bringing them to justice now fell squarely upon the shoulders of himself and his protégée.

"Find them, Henrietta," said Giuseppe, the softness of his voice belying the considerable determination and anger seething beneath his cool exterior. "Make them pay."

It was only like a little girl in a dream and after a gentle notion from her supervisor that Henrietta knelt down to perform her examination of the crime scene; Giuseppe had never seen such behavior on the part of his ward throughout the three years they had worked together, and it worried him tremendously. The look she wore was one he could not quite put his finger on – was it fear that danced behind her limpid brown eyes, or something else? He had no time to postulate at present, though, and spurred Henrietta on with quiet words of encouragement, urging her to focus on the job at hand and do it right.

As mentioned previously, Nightfall and Sundown were experts at masking their tracks. But their skill was, of course, limited only to what they could spot. The military surplus split-toe jungle warfare boots that the murderous twosome always wore had hobnailed soles, and the heads of these nails left infinitesimal scratch marks – discernible only to enhanced vision like Henrietta's – wherever they trod. It did not take long for her to ascertain a trail. "This way," she finally said in an uncharacteristic, hesitant monotone, indicating a passage leading south out of the square before hurrying down it, followed closely by Enzo, his men and a still-troubled Giuseppe.

The ungodly luck of Italy's most feared murderers since the Monster of Florence had finally run out, and their hateful lives had less than an hour to run.

**END OF CHAPTER ONE**


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO: CARNAGE**

Two pairs of baleful eyes, hidden behind infrared goggles glowing fiery red in the gloom from skull-like Kevlar facemasks, glared with surprise in the direction of the doorway to their owners' dark, dingy hideaway. One could say that the portal exploded, but that particular verb would not have done the action justice. Rather, it shattered into infinitesimal pieces. The dwellers in the darkness had seen something like this before during their days as assassins-for-hire, when a tremendous landslide had plowed through a government official's estate seconds before they had been scheduled to blow it up.

But this was slightly different – more localized and very professional. It was classic anti-terrorist tactics – hit them with smoke and sonics, then storm in while the targets were still disoriented. Whatever was coming, it would be rough. Nightfall and Sundown were certain of it, and they were right.

Dust clouds settled slowly, depositing a pale sheet upon the ground. A loud creak and a yell of shock as the intruders literally fell for the pit trap in the hallway – a concealed hole approximately two meters square and eight feet deep, lined by downward-pointing spikes smeared with feces. Four loud bangs now, indicating that careless feet had activated the four double-barreled shotguns suspended from the ceiling in the succeeding corridor, each with a near-invisible tripwire connected to its trigger. A Herstal P-90 chattered, sending a hail of bullets flying into the foyer, but the robed ghouls had already zigzagged away, making for the higher ground and staying low to diminish their size as targets. This was the perfect time to do it, while the interlopers were still stunned by the hideout's hidden traps – the last place the pair wanted to be was pinned down on a lower level.

When a diminutive female form wielding the aforementioned submachine gun leapt out of the haze and came bounding up the stairs, the astonishment that registered in Nightfall and Sundown's minds at this unbelievable sight lasted for but a moment. They had heard horror stories about this stuff before – delirious babblings of mortally wounded Padania friends in hospital, talking of pre-adolescent government assassins with superhuman strength and bulletproof skin; killer cyborg tots who decimated the terrorists' ranks, took a licking and kept on kicking. Never being ones to disregard information just because the source may have been a crackpot, the duo silently leveled their TAO JaTiMatics – the custom-made, large-capacity magazines loaded with armor-piercing ammunition – at their opponent as she closed the distance, seemingly unaware of their presence behind a large cupboard.

In spite odds of a million to one, it was at the precise moment Nightfall and Sundown chose to open fire that the tiny figure bent low and unleashed a fusillade of her own as the deadly rounds with their tungsten-carbide cores whizzed overhead. Cursing vilely, the killers rolled for cover, bullets snatching at their capes and riddling the fabric with holes, only to run into a second adversary – a tall, lean man in standard Special Forces door-kicking and room-clearing gear, who instantly pulled a Beretta and started shooting. Caught completely off-guard, Nightfall collapsed like a paper house in a hurricane upon being hit twice in the back and Sundown, catching three rounds in the chest, toppled backwards, colliding with his initial target as he tumbled down the stairs. Their discarded weapons spun across the floor, harmlessly coming to rest ten-odd meters away.

Unaware that the trauma plates beneath his adversaries' robes had left them largely unharmed, Giuseppe approached his fallen quarry only to have the fiend leap on him like a wildcat. Needle-like artificial claws sprung like flick-knives from the fingers of Nightfall's left gauntlet, digging into Giuseppe's side and tearing off the rear panel of his bulletproof vest. Filed teeth, like razors, found their mark on his trapezius, sending white-hot pain searing through the muscles' every fiber. Giuseppe lashed out with an elbow, knocking Nightfall off his back and launching a counter-attack of his own, but the serial killer deflected it expertly and soon showed him what a fast kick truly was. The blow exploded in the SISDE agent's midsection, sunlight flaring behind his eyes as the agony rose.

With a superhuman effort, Giuseppe ignored the pain and twisted aside, barely escaping Nightfall's next strike as he did so, and rapidly grasped that trying to match his opponent's savagery was a mistake. Armed with this knowledge, he began to take the fight to the enemy in a new fashion both cunning and ruthless.

Feigning dazed and permitting Nightfall to come in close and try for a third kick, Giuseppe dodged at the very last moment and struck him just the right sort of cut above the eyes – the type that bled. The murderer's next few blows he evaded and ducked away from as best he could until the blood from the aforesaid wound trickled down into Nightfall's eyes. He charged, blind, and Giuseppe delivered a quick jab to the nerve cluster in his deltoid. It did not hurt Nightfall the least bit… but no force on Earth could help him move his left arm now.

His right was still in action, though, and it was still as rapid and as deadly as ever, the gloved, brass-knuckled fist tipping it connecting with Giuseppe's jaw in the blink of an eye and knocking him off-balance. Blackness came in from the edges of Giuseppe's vision and the lower half of his face felt as though it was ablaze, but he successfully willed himself from succumbing to the agony. By now sick of the arm, he launched forward before Nightfall could pause to wipe his eyes clean and killed it beneath the elbow with a skillfully aimed chop.

The killer let out a howl of frustration and spun for Giuseppe's throat, fangs aimed at his jugular. Side-stepping this frenzied assault, Giuseppe tripped up his foe and sent him crashing headfirst to the floor. The impact of the concrete against his face was sufficient to stun Nightfall and Giuseppe quickly flex-cuffed the fallen man's ankles together while he was still incapacitated.

Meanwhile, Henrietta was fully engaged with Sundown at the foot of the stairs. Her foe fought ferociously, punishing her with numerous body blows that would have finished a lesser mortal in mere seconds, but the young brunette soaked up the first few hits like a sponge and effortlessly avoided the rest in a series of graceful movements that left Sundown swiping at empty air. What sounded like the maddened shriek of a wounded beast filled the hall as Henrietta took hold of Sundown's arms and twisted downwards, snapping them like twigs before flinging him cleanly through a nearby wood-and-plaster wall.

Gasping and wheezing, Sundown scrambled to his feet in spite of the sheer agony that wracked his body, desperately trying to press a nearby detonator-like switch that was linked by wires to a bulky object that lay in a corner of the room he had been hurled into. But Henrietta cut short his attempt, so to speak. Striding in with a sharp-edged plank in her hands and her delicate features set in a terrible blend of hatred and triumph, she brushed the button away from Sundown's booted left foot and hacked off his head.

Giuseppe was leaning against the banister, utterly exhausted, as his _fratello_ ascended the steps. He scarcely had time to approach her and ask after her well being when Henrietta yanked the captive Nightfall upright and stared him in the eye with a look of pure loathing. Befuddlement clouded the supervisor's mind upon seeing the killer's grimy, unshaven face register stark terror – not the fear that criminals and terrorists experience upon being confronted with the Agency's cybernetically enhanced hit-kids, but the fear of meeting a nightmare from your past that has come back to haunt you.

Before Giuseppe could do anything to stop her, Henrietta was repeatedly and feverishly thrusting a long sliver of glass into the prisoner's chest, severing his heart from its attachments. _Vena cava superior. Aorta. Arteria pulmonalis. Bronchus principalis_. Nightfall slumped to the floor as Henrietta released him, dying slowly and agonizingly in a pool of his own blood.

**END OF CHAPTER TWO**


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE: CLOSURE**

The clean-up crew paced in awe through the wrecked house, marveling at the diabolical ingenuity of the many traps that peppered its interior. While Henrietta's armor had enabled her to escape injury from the quadruple shotguns, the two _Squadra Mobile_ officers who triggered the pit trap were not so fortunate. Seriously injured upon being snared, attending doctors at the hospital to which they had been evacuated nonetheless confirmed that they would recover. A bomb squad had successfully defused the massive explosive device that Sundown had attempted to detonate. This was the bomb with which the homicidal pair intended to bury by the roadside and blow up a school bus – a professionally built monstrosity with enough power to destroy a tank.

Hard on the heels of the army of police technicians was Enzo Spinelli, and he was livid. I gave you explicit orders to capture the murderers alive that we could investigate their links to terrorist organizations from which they almost certainly obtained their equipment, he fumed at Giuseppe, and your cyborg kills them both. What is the meaning of this? Giuseppe could only provide the fractured explanation that Henrietta gave him after he gently questioned her in spite of his own aggravation – that she felt an inexplicable surge of fear and revulsion upon encountering them and their foul work, and could only banish these feelings via wholesale extermination. She presently sat silently in a corner, hands trembling slightly and hot tears streaming down her face. But she was not crying, and nobody – not even Giuseppe – dared to approach her at this point.

Utterly mystified and still stung, Enzo made it clear to Giuseppe that friends though they were, he would be filing a complaint with Chief Lorenzo over what had taken place. But it was soon afterwards, as both men searched through the grisly contents of the killers' lair, that they would find answers and Enzo's viewpoint change drastically.

Among the bell jars filled with ghastly anatomical specimens, small mountains of contaminated needles (intended for mounting in theater seats), bomb-making materials, enormous caches of weapons and numerous tomes on black magic rituals and the occult, Giuseppe discovered a large, leather-bound ledger entitled _Curriculum Mortis_, filled to brimming with newspaper cuttings on the Nightfall and Sundown murders and gloating, graphic accounts of the crimes by the killers themselves. He was thunderstruck to learn that the pair had been responsible for numerous other unsolved deaths all over Italy prior to adopting the Nightfall and Sundown personas, including the cruel butchering of a Rome family of six that occurred three years ago. Enzo gasped upon reading the name of the sole survivor of that terrible incident, and a badly shaken Giuseppe put his finger to his lips as they moved back into the hall.

"Oh, well," said Enzo awkwardly, all the anger gone from him. "I suppose it'll save us the cost and trouble of putting the whoresons on trial." He patted Giuseppe on the shoulder and gave Henrietta a nod of acknowledgment. "Good job, you two."

Giuseppe tenderly helped his ward up and held her close. "Perhaps it was just as well that you did what you did, Henrietta," he said, voice quavering. "I'm proud of you."

And that was all she needed to hear. Henrietta, limp at first, returned the hug like she would never let go, and Giuseppe carried her to where Alphonso was waiting to take them home. Enzo stood at the door, staring at the van's taillights as it turned a corner and vanished from sight. He was left standing there for a very long time.

**END OF CHAPTER THREE**

**-FIN-**


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